


The Incredibly True Adventures of Stickman and Blob

by mintwitch



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Gen, High School, M/M, Male Slash, Pre-Canon, Prequel, Public Sex, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 22:50:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintwitch/pseuds/mintwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My QAF-US prequel fic. IIRC, this was the first QAF-US fic that I wrote. For a long time, I thought it was gone forever; I'm happy that it's found. I still like this story, and am proud of the work I did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Incredibly True Adventures of Stickman and Blob

**Author's Note:**

> All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. This site holds no connection to and is not endorsed by: Channel IV, Russell T. Davies, Showtime, CowLip Productions or any of the other writers and producers of either the UK or the US/NA Queer As Folk series. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

_go_  
  
So, in the series, Michael went bowling with Brian, and Brian's dad, call-me-Jack Kinney, but Debbie always tells Brian, says, "I've known you since you were 14," or "I've known you longer than you've known yourself," so that's where it begins, when it began, in this dimension, at least. In this dimension, Brian is 14, it's the first day of high-school, and half the freshmen are from a different middle school in the same district, like the kid sitting next to him in first period Algebra, Novotny, N-O-V, Novotny, Michael, which everyone now knows thanks to the lame alphabetical-order seating chart, like they're still in Junior High or something.  
  
Brian does his homework during class, just for something to do, not because he's a geek or anything. The Novotny kid looks confused for a while, glazes over like a donut, writes in his cheap notebook with his cheap pencil, writes not-Algebra for the rest of class, obviously a total dweeb, because the right kind of school supplies are crucial, doesn't this kid know anything?  
  
That would be a big 'No,' writ large when some jock pushes Michael N-O-V Novotny outside class, calls him "Mikey." "Watch it, Mikey, don't drop your coloring books," and the jock and his stupid jock friends laugh, the jock walking backwards to watch comic books, notebooks, textbooks spill to the floor at Michael's feet, kids bumping and shoving, and stepping on his stuff.  
  
And it's not like Brian cares or anything, his foot just sort of wanders out, and if it happens that some dick jock is walking backwards and laughing and not looking where he's going and just happens to stumble and land on his ass, well, these things happen, and that's worth a laugh or two in Brian's book.  
  
But Mike, Mikey, whatever, smiles and laughs too, this short little geek and he's kinda fat, but he's laughing and Brian is suddenly not too tall for his jeans (waiting for a flood, Kinney?), too skinny, too bony, too fourteen, no he's Superman, he's a freakin' hero, and Brian walks forward, picks up one of Mikey's comics, Brian's talking to the geek whose gaze has just made him invincible.  
  
"Captain Astro? Just how old are you, Mikey?" he mocks, paging through the bright drawings, holding it out of Mike's reach.  
  
"My name is Michael!" insists, well, Mikey, because he's just not a Michael, not yet, not with his voice breaking about ten thousand times in four words.  
  
Brian laughs, bumps his shoulder against Mike's, says, "you'll always be Mikey to me... Mikeeeey!" And if it turns out they only have one other class in common, well, Brian only asked to be polite, and Michael doesn't really notice that despite this Brian Kinney is somehow around between every class and that they end up at the same table during lunch.   
  
And Michael, if pressed ten or fifteen years later, would admit that he's never sure how Brian ended up at his house for dinner that night, or helping Mike with his Algebra homework, or how Brian ended up eating dinner at the Novotny house for the next four years, more or less. It just sort of happened, he would say, although Brian might have a slightly different answer, if he even acknowledged the question.  
  
Debbie doesn't ask, not even when the boys are sixteen and Brian gets his license and a second-hand jeep, and starts showing up for breakfast, too. Nor when he shows up with a split lip that wasn't there the night before. Debbie offers more eggs, "gotta get some meat on those bones, boyo," fills Brian's plate twice more before they have to leave for school.  
  
  
 _insouciant_  
  
By sixteen, Debbie's boys are fitting into their skins. Michael will never be tall, but he's not quite short anymore, either. He's gradually smoothing upward into something pliant and lithe and welcoming, turning his face always towards Brian's sun.  
  
Brian scares Debbie Novotny. He's too beautiful, too smart, too scarred for his own safety. He's too terribly sixteen going on forty for any mother's comfort.  
  
Tucked in between the years are things that some people know and others don't. Deb knows that Michael is gay, and tells him. Michael tells Brian, Brian says, "Everybody knows, Mikey," and takes him to Liberty Avenue for the first time, the second time, and every time thereafter. One day it occurs to Michael that he's never been to Liberty Avenue without Brian, which could seem strange, but doesn't.  
  
Brian always drives down and Michael almost always drives them home, the almost a thing that Brian knows and Michael knows, but Debbie doesn't. Still, Deb isn't stupid, and soon there are rules. She quits the store, starts working at a diner off the Avenue, and her boys always have a place to go if things don't work out quite as planned. Brian begins making some rules of his own, but doesn't share. Brian's rules are a thing only he knows, although if Michael was paying attention he could probably figure out one or two.  
  
Michael's first blowjob and Brian is there, as usual, laughing, "what did you think I was doing, Mikey?" and "God, you're so pathetic," ritual words for a confirmation. Brian takes his hand, leads Michael into the back room, Michael's heart thump-thump-thumping, "this is it... is it... it... it... it...," his dick remembering Brian's hand, that one awful, wonderful coitus interruptus, but as it turns out that's not what's happening at all.  
  
The backrooms of Liberty Ave are another of those things that Brian knows and Michael doesn't, so Mike is startled to find himself shirtless, leaning back against Brian's chest in a dark room that sounds like moans and smells like sweat. Brian's fingers trickle down Mike's skin, pinch a nipple, undo the button of his jeans, and return to tuck Mikey under his chin, fold around his shoulders. They stand there, Brian breathing into Mike's ear as some old guy, not old-old, but still, like thirty or something, slides in front of Michael, touches him, works his zipper.  
  
Michael leans into his living wall, panting hard, when the old guy sinks to his knees and swallows his dick, Brian still laughing, always laughing, "feel good, Mikey?" Oh yeah, it's good, it's better than good, it's, it's Super! and the only thing that could possibly make it any better will never, ever happen, so yeah, he'll be doing this again, Mikey likes it.  
  
Brian isn't there for Michael's second try at the backrooms, or the third or the fourth, although usually he's nearby, until the night they don't mention, after which Michael doesn't spend quite as much time in the back, and Brian makes another rule, and they only do drugs together.  
  
School fits into their lives as an afterthought. Brian tries out for soccer, joins the Chemistry Club, because "Colleges like it when you have 'extracurricular activities,'" said with the sneer that won't be supercilious for another year or two, but Michael is impressed anyway, and practices diligently until Deb finally asks him if something is wrong with his face.  
  
  
 _Nike_  
  
Something that Deb knows, but Michael doesn't: Brian appears at the diner one night, shaking, very un-Brian-like. She settles him into a booth and on her break she listens to him not talk, watches the golden boy try to decide if he's in love or in hate, at least until Michael comes in, looking for his, his something, his friend, his other half, just... looking for Brian, as usual.  
  
The mask falls into place as if it were Brian's true face and Debbie thinks, not for the first time, "poor Brian" followed by "Brian-fucking-Kinney" not sure which is the real thought, and which is her fooling herself.   
  
She's still not certain which is which when it's Michael's turn to not speak. She holds onto him that night, as tight as she can; it's what she does, it's what Michael will let her do. A couple of weeks later, Brian sets a precedent for better vengeance through Chemistry, because Michael is necessary, is not to be fucked with, is Brian's.  
  
Brian is learning to prioritize, an important life skill, according to the guidance counselor in the career center who doesn't recognize hunger when she sees it. Brian is starving, dying by slow degrees with only Michael and Debbie to feed him. Affection, attention, food is love, recognition is power, and he's counting the minutes until college, freedom from his fucked-up family and high-school and pretty much everything, because everything pretty much sucks. Brian's gonna fly, Brian fucking Kinney is gonna fly, and he turns his budding sense of irony towards homework, fifteen-hundred words or less, writes about Nike, winged victory, with his tongue tucked so firmly in his cheek it might as well be someone's dick.  
  
SAT's come back, not a good day. Brian does well, Brian does everything well, but Mikey is destined for the CC or a lucrative career in fast food. They have their first real fight, not speaking for nearly three weeks. Brian calls every day, more, breathing away from the receiver, until finally Debbie shouts into the phone "get your faggot ass over here and apologize, you asshole!" So he does, somehow managing to avoid the words yet convince Michael that there is nothing he wants more on the planet than to go to State, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die, and "I'm not fucking swearing on a stack of comic books, for Christ's sake. God, Mikey, you are sooo..."  
  
And in reality, it doesn't hurt that State is cheaper, or that his folks (call-me-Jack) will help if he goes for business. Brian shoves the word 'artist' into a small corner of his complicated psyche and bricks it in, holds out only for the dorms, even though "it would be cheaper for you to live at home" but call-me-Jack isn't paying room and board, is he? It's Brian's scholarship and he's learned to prioritize.  
  
  
 _sea-change_  
  
Graduation, and Brian is named Salutatorian. Debbie insists he should have been Valedictorian, but that honor goes to what must be the only Asian-American kid in the entire district. Brian is sometimes careful, frequently complex, and knows exactly what he's doing, so he smiles at Deb, shrugs, refrains from comment, a phrase he picked up from somewhere and has been mentally fondling ever since.  
  
It turns out the only Asian-American kid in the entire district happens to be a fag, which Brian finds convenient, so he fucks him under the bleachers after the speeches, while the rest of the class files meekly out to the busses for the traditional Senior trip to Kennywood.  
  
Michael flits nervously in the parking lot, circling the increasingly hysterical vice-principal until the prodigies make their appearance, Li slightly mussed, Brian in full dishabille. Brian has found his super-secret super-power, he floats, dips, soars across the asphalt, gown open over bare chest and gray slacks. He is sheened with sweat and sex and "I can make you forget your own name," which half of the senior class promptly does, and the drab blue nylon might as well be a cape.  
  
Brian lights a joint before they even reach the Jeep, the school, parking lot, busses, everything except Michael fading into air, into thin air. He takes shotgun, tosses the keys at Mikey, says "to the Club, Driver," and Mike should have seen this coming weeks ago, should have known that this is how it would be the very minute, the single solitary second, that Brian felt free.   
  
There is a word for how Brian looks in that moment, a word that rings bronze and bold and deceptive, a word that's rich and strange, but it's not a word Mike knows, so he starts the Jeep, and half-listens to Brian calling him Charles and Driver and saying "disport," until he finds a parking space and is dragged onto the sidewalk to bob along in Brian's wake like deranged comics characters, like Captain Skinny and Blob-boy --or no, better, Stickman and Blob, although for once Brian looks like what he's going to be, not what he is, even if only Michael can see it.  
  
What Brian is, is eighteen with a fake ID, but that doesn't seem to matter. Doors open, crowds part, and if Brian is determined to ride every ride then it seems like half of Pittsburgh is happy to help out. It's the first night of the rest of Brian's life, and maybe Mikey's not the only one that sees him anymore.  
  
They stay out long past curfew, long enough for Deb to turn off the porch-light, long enough to follow the sun. Debbie makes eggs, fills Brian's plate three times, sends them up to crash in Michael's room. It's the first morning of the first day, and they don't have to leave for school.  
  
  
 _domesticity and discontent_  
  
Summer in Pitt lacks the sexiness of sultry or humid. Summer in Pittsburgh stinks of carbon-monoxide, urine, sweat, irritation. It's hotter than all the seven hells combined, and old ladies move like molasses behind their walkers, plastic bags dangling from hollow aluminum frames.  
  
Brian stops sleeping at home, avoids the old homestead as if it contains a rare and virulent disease, which it does, only not so rare after all. Graduation festivities somehow culminated in a rainbow of bruises, and Debbie and Brian have a small private chat that consists of Deb talking and Brian playing with a fork, twining it between smooth, unmarked knuckles.  
  
Most nights Brian is under the Novotny roof, sleeping on the basement daybed after Vic and his C-Pap move into the guest room. Some nights Brian simply disappears and Michael pouts and sulks, and calls Brian asshole at the next earliest opportunity. Deb worries, joins PFLAG, not sure whether she's a parent or a friend, finally adding an extra F to her private acronym, because they are all family, every damn one of them.  
  
Michael is a stock-boy at the Big-Q, the same summer job he's had since forever, but this summer isn't like the ones before, there is no Brian waiting outside in the Jeep when he gets off work. There are noises about Mike making Shift Supervisor, "just one step up to Assistant Manager!" now that he's a college boy, even if it's only Allegheny CC. Brian laughs, "you're moving up in the world, Mikey," and eventually admits to giving lube jobs at a gas station for book money, an anachronistic reminder that ancient Jeeps don't fix themselves up, that Brian was raised by a man's-man, has born the marks to prove it.  
  
Brian's fingernails are blackened with grease that summer, and he stalks the periphery of the scene, makes plans, takes mental snapshots of a life less ordinary, less blue-collar, less everything that reviles him and is despised in return. Brian is learning to dish it out and not to take it, and the only place he and Mikey connect is wherever Debbie happens to be.  
  
It's a long, bitter summer. Every word is hateful and drips frustration, as A/C units drip water onto sidewalks, a steady drip drip drip that fades into the background as fast as the evidence evaporates.  
  
Michael gets a boyfriend, a grad student in electrical engineering who shows up for penne at Debbie's sometime in July and never comes back. Brian bats his eyelashes, flexes prettily, and practices the rule of silence. What Mikey doesn't know is designed to protect him and if that means Brian propositions every asshole between Pittsburgh and LA, well, whatthefuckever.  
  
Classes start the day after Labor Day? Memorial Day? some fuckin' Monday, and who cares. Brian's dorm room is a shit-hole, and his roommate puts up Led Zeppelin posters and blow-dries his tragic hair at six AM every morning, until putting in a transfer request to Res Life claiming Brian threatened to bludgeon him to death with a chair. In his own defense, it was less a threat than a politely worded offer, but he's not sad to see the glam-rocker go: there are definite advantages to having a room to himself, and his permanent record doesn't bother him much.  
  
Nights, Brian fucks, drilling a series of twinks through the cheap mattress while gnats work themselves through the window screen to compete madly for the affections of his desk lamp. Late nights he studies, squinting at Intro to Economics while sketching caricatures of tricks in the margins of his notebook, until one evening at the diner Debbie notices and the next day takes him to buy glasses.   
  
Brian remains adamant that he doesn't need glasses, but sometimes, when it's late and his eyes are tired, he wears them anyway.  
  
  
 _covenant_  
  
Forty days and forty nights. Vic says, "People drift apart, it's natural," in that voice he has, the voice that is supposed to be soothing, that makes everything sound normal. Vic has seen everything, done everything, but he doesn't know Brian. Tired, jaded, and sick is not the same as knowing.  
  
"Not us, not me and Brian," because Brian needs him and he needs Brian, "you don't understand." Mike hates that his voice still cracks and blames adenoids. Hates that he sounds unsure when he's not, he's not, not, not, and trips over Brian's body one morning as he's leaving for school, prostrate on the stoop, endless legs dangling down the steps.  
  
"What's the hang-up? You're gonna be late!" Debbie is psychic, Debbie is The Mom, and Debbie can hear worlds upon worlds in a door not closing.  
  
"It's Brian, I think he's dead," as the corpse rolls its eyes and groans, and Debbie is in the doorway, swearing.  
  
"Jesus, Brian," any one of them could have said it, it's just what you say when he does shit like this.  
  
Jesus-Brian blinks, grins, sneers or snarls, does something with his face, and waves a fist in the air, "look Sonny Boy, a shiny nickel from dear old Dad." A roll of damp bills drops from Brian's hand, and fuck, Michael has only seen that much money at the store, what did Jack do, win at poker or rob a bank?  
  
The green layers curl apart, suspense killing them. Michael thinks there should be a sudden gust of wind, a fluttering chase, moments of slapstick and a red balloon, but there is only Brian, drunk, going to State, and golden as the sun; Apollo with dirty fingernails, and money enough to buy forgiveness, if gods could be bought.  
  
Mike and Deb get Brian up the stairs, into Mike's room, Vic following with a plastic basin and towels. Mike strips him down to his underwear, pausing when Brian grabs his hair, slurs "sorry, Mikey" and "I love you." Brian is always affectionate and trite right before he passes out. Michael goes to class.  
  
Brian is still in his bed when he gets home from work, still there when Mike pushes him over and crawls in, mouth open and wheezing quietly. He's gone when Michael wakes, but shows up for dinner that night, bland and smiling, a cluster of daisies for Debbie in hand. He helps Mike with his homework, Vic with the dishes, asks about the wait-list for the new anti-virals, as if he'd been around all along, as if he'd never disappeared into the labyrinth of State. Vic wonders, Debbie accepts, and Mike shoots significant glances, silent I told you so's, across the kitchen.  
  
Fall collapses into winter and snow sticks in the gutters, slides in sheets off of tree limbs and down collars. Stickman and Blob are back on Liberty Avenue, and Michael's grades edge up to straight C's. He lasts three semesters at Allegheny, fighting the tide, gives up to go full time at the Big-Q.  
  
Michael's future stretches before him in a straight line, dead at eighty stocking toilet paper at midnight, his body found the next morning, clean-up in aisle six. Brian mocks him, starts a band, says "we're gonna be famous, Mikey," and actually, they're not too bad.  
  
Brian only buys flowers when they don't mean anything. For Michael's apartment-warming, his I-finally-got-my-own-place party, he brings liquor, a case of IC Light dangling from one hand, a half-empty bottle of Jack in the other. If Michael had to guess, he'd say that parties make Brian nervous, except Brian is never nervous, especially when he's had a few, which is kind of the point.  
  
"About time you showed up," and Debbie makes everything better and more difficult. She can dress you down, tell you off, accept your lame apology, and forgive you, all in single flickering glance from your carefully tousled hair to your pretentious boots. When she speaks, it's often in non sequiturs, the important parts already said, contained in the angle of her head, the tension in her shoulders.  
  
Michael's sigh is resignation or maybe relief. He waves Brian in, "you might as well," to join the slightly lame party.  
  
His apartment is small, but it suits him. Too much space and he and his sparse furniture would be lost, adrift, but the tiny studio is a perfect burrow for an animal as wary and newly-hatched as Mike.  
  
"It's funny," Michael says one day, and stops, not sure what he means. "Us," and stops again.  
  
Brian passes over the joint, slouches lower on the bench, "hmmms" without a vestige of actual interest, but that's just Brian. The thousand-yard stare appeared after he transferred to Carnegie Mellon (" _Haaaahvaahd_ on the Mon," crows Debbie) another weapon in Brian's growing arsenal of deflection.  
  
"I mean," says Mike, meaning something. It's welling up inside him, he can feel it, as real as his butt going numb on the bench, as real as another February and snow in his hair, and he's gonna say it, "I love you, too, okay?" That's all, he's said it, and tries to retreat into the collar of his jacket, pull his head in like a turtle, but Brian is there, slightly stoned and smiling, pressing warm lips against his own.  
  
"I know, Mikey," smoke-ring words breaking apart against Michael's ear and then he's up, "let's blow, I wanna get laid." Michael follows, as usual, no choice but to follow, taking two steps for each of Brian's, always.  
  
And it is funny, it is, him and Brian, he and Brian, Brian and him? Whatever, it's just funny, funny strange, not funny ha-ha. Somewhere in Michael's head they're still Stickman and Blob: Kinney is a tall, skinny kid with doorknob elbows, Mike's a chubby little chipmunk, it's the two of them against the world, and they will always be fourteen.  
  
 _~fin~_


End file.
